Black Walnuts — Gosh And The Squirrel

Jayadvaita: By Ann Arbor temple there is one squirrel who comes to take prasada from the devotees. He comes right up to them and takes some laddu or something like that. Very fat squirrel.

Prabhupada: He knows that they’ll not harm.

Garden Conversation — June 14, 1976, Detroit

I have been harvesting black walnuts with my new toy a nut harvester and running them through my dehuller. After dehulling I put them in a case that doesn’t hold water and clean them by blasting them off a with hose nozzle that concentrates the stream of water.

I have been setting them in the greenhouse to dry off and cure but we are having a series of cool cloudy days and I had some experience of them getting moldy on the surface. So I have taken to leaving them outside in the breezes to dry off first before bringing them inside.

This morning Vidya was looking out the window and called me over to draw my attention to a squirrel on the garage roof. She said he was loking for black walnuts in the driveway where they would be left after dehulling.

Seeing none, he leapt into the arborvitae across the sidewalk and disappeared. Suddenly he appeared running across the front lawn and jumped up unto a bench where a case of nuts was sitting. I had forgotten to bring them in last night.

By the time I ran to the door and threw it open, he already had one in his paws and high tailed with it.

I knew he had been operating in the vicinity. Whenever the car is in the driveway, I put black walnuts behind the tires. Then the next time anyone drives off, the hulls are split. I have been known to rush out and put them behind the tires of visitors before they leave.

I could just drive over them for the sole purpose of driving over them, but that would be extra carbon into the atmosphere so I go with the flow of driving over them when the car would be going anyway. Then at some point I put on rubber gloves so I don’t stain my fingers with black walnut hull dye and pick up the nuts and split hulls. I have never previously felt pressured to do this timely.

The last time I did this casually I was gone for one and a half hours and went to pick them up immediately upon returning. The first twelve I picked up the hull was there but the nut was gone. This was a clear indication of the presence of an opportunistic squirrel.

I have a lot of black walnut trees on my property and only pick up a fraction of them for my personal use so it wasn’t lack of nuts that drove the squirrel to rob from me. It is simply to avoid having to hull them himself or to avoid waiting for the worms to hull them for him.

So I now have to consider when putting out nuts to be hulled if I want to share or if I am going to be right there to pick them up as soon as they are driven over.

To be the servant of a squirrel, that is how my life is playing out. :-)